Ariel: Poems - Softcover

Plath, Sylvia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060931728 ISBN 13: 9780060931728

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1999

Synopsis

"Sylvia Plath's last poems have impressed themselves on many readers with the force of myth. They are among the handful of writings by which future generations will seek to know us and give us a name." -- The Critical Quarterly

Sylvia Plath's celebrated collection.

When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific oeuvre but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. Ted Hughes helped bring the collection to life in 1966, and its publication garnered worldwide acclaim. This collection showcases the beloved poet's brilliant, provoking, and always moving poems, including "Ariel," "The Applicant," "Lady Lazarus," and "Edge", and once again shows why readers have fallen in love with her work over generations.

About this title

About the Author

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.

From the Back Cover

"In these poems...Sylvia Plath becomes herself, becomes something imaginary, newly, wildly and subtly created."
-- From the Introduction by Robert Lowell

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ariel

Perennial Classics EditionBy Plath, Sylvia

Perennial

Copyright © 2004 Sylvia Plath
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060931728

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.
And now you try Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Continues...

Excerpted from Arielby Plath, Sylvia Copyright © 2004 by Sylvia Plath. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060931728
• ISBN 13: 9780060931728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128